Josiah Trotter’s coverage abilities have been much publicized of late.

Did the Bucs get a raw player with huge upside — a diamond in the rough as far as his ability to defend the pass? Or are they signing up for yet another lost soul in space? The answer to that question won’t be known for many years. But we can still look for clues, and look for clues I have.

One such clue came from Trotter’s defensive coordinator at Missouri, Derek Nicholson. Fox Sports’ Greg Auman relayed Nicholson’s thoughts on several Bucs through a social media post here.

“There’s a narrative that he can’t do that [coverage],” Nicholson said. “That’s the opposite of the truth. He has the physical attributes, the length and range and quickness and speed, to be a terror in coverage. He’s a full 6-2 with 32-inch arms. He’s very instinctive and has good awareness. That’s a phase he’s only going to get better at.

“Some of the issues people highlight, that happened in the first 3-4 games, from him getting used to a different coverage defense than he’s ever played in. There was a learning curve for a lot of our newer players. After Week 4, he was our best internal coverage piece, doing a good job in zone and man. He’s an impact player from day one.”

Nicholson isn’t a neutral party, but he is the person who watched every coverage rep Trotter played in 2025, and the specificity of that quote is what stopped me. He didn’t say Trotter was always good, or that the criticism was unfair. He said after Week 4. He drew a line on the calendar and told us, the player on one side of that line is not the player on the other side.

Bucs ILB Josiah Trotter – Photo courtesy of Missouri Athletics

In my initial scouting report of Trotter during the pre-draft process, I watched three games from 2025. South Carolina (week four), Auburn (week eight) and Arkansas (week 14). One of those games falls within the first 3-4 games that Nicholson noted was less than stellar.

Admittedly, the South Carolina game was really bad and carried considerable weight in my grading. I was left with the following thoughts on his coverage skills back on my scouting report back in February.

Trotter is young and still has plenty of room to grow in this area, but currently he doesn’t have a great feel in space, and he can be easily pulled from his zone/assignment. He gets antsy and doesn’t show a great understanding of route development around him. This can leave Trotter’s defense in trouble too often. He also bites too hard on play action, leaving him woefully out of position as eligibles gain loads of space behind him.

While he closes fast, Trotter is rarely unbalanced or undisciplined. From a mugged-up position he has the speed to drop quickly enough to close windows despite not being adept at the finer points of the skill.”

But Nicholson’s remarks about Trotter’s evolution are noteworthy. And they pushed me to go back and look at the end of his season more closely. So, I went and re-watched Arkansas and added Mississippi state (week 12) and Oklahoma (week 13).

Tape Notes

Before I get to what I saw, it is worth naming what I was looking for from Josiah Trotter.

There are two questions that decide whether a linebacker can hold up in coverage at the next level. The first is whether he has the athletic traits. The second is whether he has the instincts and the processing to diagnose what is happening and be in the right spot.

Bucs ILB Josiah Trotter – Photo courtesy of Missouri Athletics

The minimum price of admission in the league is having the first trait. Despite Trotter not testing at the NFL Scouting Combine or his Pro Day, his tape shows he has those traits.

The speed is NFL level, and he can stop and transition with plenty of joint flexibility and he has plus stop-start skills.

When talking about Trotter’s coverage skills there are two thing that are important to note.

1. Does he have the athletic traits to hold up in coverage?

2. Does he have the instincts/processing skills to diagnose and be in the right spot?

KJ Britt didn’t have #1. Trotter does. pic.twitter.com/1eVMs9jDQU

— Josh Queipo (@JoshQueipo_NFL) April 28, 2026

But that was there before the midseason change that Nicholson noted. Was there anything that noticeably changed in how he processed the game as a coverage backer?

The answer is yes.

The misdirection. The eye-candy. The things that were pulling him completely out of position early in the season were not drawing him in nearly as much. Those were issues because he bit so hard it was impossible for him to recover and get back to his assignment in enough time. Late in the season he was triggering on his actual key rather than the one the offense wanted him to read, and the difference between a linebacker who bites and a linebacker who doesn’t is often the difference between a 4-yard window and a 14-yard one.

You can see the processing take a leap in the latter half of the season.

Josiah Trotter identifying the screen and working to blow it up pic.twitter.com/1nhwHne3Et

— Josh Queipo (@JoshQueipo_NFL) May 3, 2026

Identifying the real structure of the play and getting to a spot before the blocking can evolve is a good indicator of someone who is figuring out how he is getting attacked and responding appropriately. Secondly, and this is where the Nicholson quote and the tape converge most cleanly, is what happens when Trotter is committed to his zone assignment.

When he plays it instead of guessing at it, he has the balance and the spatial feel to cut off the throwing window before the ball arrives. He gets where he needs to be, and he is balanced enough when he gets there to actually play through the catch point rather than arrive late and trail the receiver.

The Arkansas rewatch gave me the rep that crystallized it.

Josiah Trotter cutting off the window for the dig and still reacting quick to the shallow cross. pic.twitter.com/pGs3WHI1jU

— Josh Queipo (@JoshQueipo_NFL) May 2, 2026

The shallow cross is supposed to pull Trotter down, but he feels the over route developing behind him as the verticals clear out other middle field defenders. He plants and opens his hips to the middle of the field so as to stick with the dig. This is playing a high-low concept at a solid level, stopping the kill shot and being prepared to limit yards after catch for the lesser of two evils.

The Bucs struggled mightily limiting YAC last year, and there’s a strong chance Trotter can stem that tide this year.

The version of Trotter I watched in those three games is not the version I graded after Week 4 and Week 8. The eye-candy issue I flagged was real in September. The drift in zone was real in September. By November, neither was showing up the same way. That is either a player who turned a corner mid-season, or a player whose September tape was always going to be a misleading sample for projecting his pro coverage ability. It is probably some of both.

Now, you know I love it when data and tape tell similar stories. What does the data have to say about Nicholson’s claims?

Josiah Trotter By The Numbers

The data confirms the tape.

Albeit in somewhat of a small sample size. Keep in mind this is a player with just 24 games and 1,144 defensive snaps in his college career. But within that sample, there is a story that dovetails nicely with his coordinator’s observations. Trotter’s rolling four-game yards per coverage snap allowed and quarterback rating allowed were at their highest in his career between weeks four (South Carolina) and eight (Auburn) last year. But after that he just plain allowed less damage through the air.

And if rolling averages aren’t your thing, how about a tale of two halves?

Slice his 2025 season cleanly in half and the two pieces look like different players.

Through the first six games, Trotter was getting cooked.

Opposing quarterbacks completed 14 of 15 throws against him for 156 yards and a touchdown and a 132.2 passer rating allowed. The South Carolina tape that anchored my original report wasn’t the worst of it. The cumulative number tells you he was a coverage liability through the first half of the year.

The last six games tell a different story. Eighteen targets, three more than the front half, for 14 catches, 96 yards and no touchdowns. The completion rate dropped from 93.3 percent to 77.8. The yards per coverage snap dropped from 1.42 to 0.71, exactly half. The passer rating allowed fell 43.3 points to 88.9.

The targets matter. Quarterbacks did not stop throwing at Trotter in the back half. They threw at him more and gave up sixty fewer yards for the trouble. That is not a player benefiting from opponents looking elsewhere. That is a player who got tested and started finding answers.

The Josiah Trotter Worth Projecting

The honest answer to the question I asked at the top of this piece is that we don’t know yet what Tampa Bay just drafted in Josiah Trotter.

Bucs ILB Josiah Trotter – Photo by: IMAGN Images – Kirby Lee

Every projection on a 24-game college player carries uncertainty, and Trotter’s projection carries more than most because the season-long coverage numbers and the late-season coverage numbers tell different stories about the same player. But the bar a linebacker has to clear in coverage is lower than the discourse around Trotter has implied.

As long as they can move and limit yards after catch, defenses can work within that model.

The question of which story to weight isn’t actually a coin flip. The coordinator who watched every snap drew the line at Week 4. The tape from the latter portion of the season shows a linebacker who processes screens, plays high-low concepts at a real level, and uses his athletic traits in coverage rather than just possessing them. The data confirms his assertion, even if it shows it took a few extra weeks.

It shows a linebacker allowing 0.71 yards per coverage rep and an 88.9 passer rating. Three independent pieces of evidence. The coach. The tape. And the numbers. They all point at the same back half of the season as the version of Trotter that should drive his projection.

Bucs ILB Josiah Trotter – Photo by: IMAGN Images

There is a real argument that the September tape was always going to be a misleading sample. Trotter was a transfer learning a new coverage system in a new conference, and the things that pulled him out of position early were the things you would expect a young linebacker to fix as the reps pile up. He was not a finished product when South Carolina played Missouri in Week 4. He was closer to one when Arkansas played Missouri in Week 14. The trajectory matters at least as much as the cumulative line, and probably more.

The NFL is a different beast. Many good college coverage inside linebackers turn out terrible in the pros. And to be honest, almost every rookie linebacker is bad in coverage. It will take years to find out who Josiah Trotter is in coverage at an NFL level.

Upon further review, I can understand what the Bucs see in him, and the arrow is pointing in the right direction.